


The Times Are Nightfall

by Quillori



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-27 21:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17774501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/pseuds/Quillori
Summary: Things change, things stay the same. A man buys a bespoke suit. Complicated political allegiances vie for the soul and future of the city. He has lived there long enough to understand them. Probably. Possibly not as well as he should.Prompt: Male Vampire Tailor/Male Spy Who's Purchased Many a Bespoke Suit from Him Over the Years





	The Times Are Nightfall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [El Staplador (elstaplador)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/gifts).



The late afternoon sun slanted low and golden, gilding the trees along the street, making cramped and dirty windows glow. Somewhere in the distance there was a sudden crack - probably only a car backfiring. Already the shadows were lengthening, darkness pooling in doorways and narrow alleys, a winter chill creeping into the air. In a few days, there would be snow. 

The city looked like a picture of itself, Valéry thought, and then told himself not to be romantic. If the weather was about to turn, he had much to get done - visit de Chattery before the road became impassible, stock up on tea, arrange an alternate rendezvous with Petr - his mind ran on, creating an orderly list; at the same time, with the ease of long practice, he noted everything around him: two men in a Tabac, buying cigarettes; an abandoned newspaper; a half open shutter; the sound of an argument from an upstairs room. Out of the sun, it was already cold; he began to walk faster, eager to get inside.

***

“Raise your right arm … it’s quite ridiculous, men who are certainly old enough to know better. But that’s the fashion now, aping the ill-considered affectations of the young. Bright blue is _not _a suitable colour, and certainly not with lapels like that, as I told him. Why not a nice respectable dark grey, like you’ve always worn? Maybe navy, if you feel you’re coming up in the world and must try something new, but no more than that. Nothing too fancy. But would he listen?”__

__It was a familiar experience, comforting in its unchangingness. When he was an old man (if he made it that long), safely retired a long way from Zernitz, he thought this would be what he would remember most clearly: not the clink of shotglasses and the burn of overproof alcohol in its dockside bars, not the famous beech trees that lined the Street of Martyrs, not the endless spire of the clocktower, not the blaze of summer sunlight on whitewashed walls, nor the cries of the street vendors, not even the cooing of pigeons at the window of his attic flat, but a dimly lit little tailor’s shop (and how Maurentz could see to work, how he hadn’t blinded himself years ago in that windowless room), the smell of cloth and chalk, an endless stream of gossip and complaint (whatever the latest fashion, it was always wrong, or at least worn wrongly and by the wrong people)._ _

__He’d been so young when he first came to Zernitz, nervous and ambitious both, and so much had changed since then, not just the recent upheaval, but the inexorable, unnoticed march of time, changing the city as it had changed him. Once everywhere had served plum brandy; now you found it only in the cheapest places, drunk by a few old men. The young couples walking beneath the trees (hand in hand now, not a polite half pace apart) wore different clothes, hummed different songs. And when he thought about it, there were almost no street vendors left. A few round the main station, maybe, dressed up in more traditional garb then had ever been worn in their heyday - really, they were dressed now to emulate the old postcards, selling the Authentic Zernitz Experience to tourists, not newspapers and sweets and toys and a hundred other cheap luxuries as they once had._ _

__“Indeed, sometimes it’s the younger customers … the other arm now … sometimes it’s the younger ones who have more sense, and will take advice. You want to look confident, I say, but not as if you don’t understand what’s expected of you. A little daring, a little cutting edge, but not too much, you can’t afford to look as if you don’t understand the rules. Or then again I may say, you, I think you should wear something more conservative, don’t look as though you’re flaunting your wealth and background. If you’re a gentleman, you don’t want to provoke envy.”_ _

__Well, that was certainly true these days. The old guard had proved surprisingly adept at holding onto power, but there were … tensions. Every few months now there was another exposé, someone else condemned: corruption, heresy against the new way of things, perversion, a traitor to the cause, all the normal charges. Always someone from an old family, but not too important, a junior branch, say, or a very unimportant member of the main branch._ _

__Were they being picked off one by one, weakest first? Get everyone used to the idea an old name didn’t save you, let them gradually realise it made you a target instead? Or was it a contest without a clear winner? Were old and new evenly matched, one side happy to sacrifice a few of its own while it cemented a grip on the new Council as firm as on the old? Were the new men taking over, or were the most promising of them being co-opted, absorbed into one family or another, not successors but merely welcome fresh blood and new talent, provided they proved ready to play by the old rules?_ _

__Still, who would listen to him either way? No doubt there were experts back home better able to judge such things; his jobs was to feed them facts, and perhaps impressions, not to make predictions. And if he occasionally doubted their wisdom, thought the man on the ground might know better than some distant so-called specialist, he knew his place and stuck to his job. The man with the too colourful suit, now, who was he? One of Maurentz’s regular customers (and Valéry knew the full list, had tracked it down, learnt it, and kept it up to date almost from the start), someone who had worn grey. Deslau perhaps? But no, he hardly looked as though he’d been lashing out on new clothes lately. But Berent, it could very well be Berent. Hadn’t he been talking to Eustachius and Cato at the Tangled Vine the other day? If he were suddenly doing well for himself… Why would the Twenty-Sevener’s faction be interested in a functionary, even quite a senior one, in the transport department? It bore looking into._ _

__He realised Maurentz had stopped pinning and was looking at him. Really, he had the most disconcerting smile. It was strange - he had a kindly face, and the lines that were beginning to show (had been beginning to show for many years, for he had one of those faces forever balanced between young and old, ageless, so he would look much the same at fifty-five as he had at thirty), the lines traced pleasant expressions: a shrewd face, perhaps, a survivor’s face, but not cruel, the face of someone who took life as it came, and found it more good than not. And yet that smile, sharp-edged and knowing, as though he could read minds, that smile that came and vanished from one moment to the next, for no obvious reason, and left no mark behind…_ _

__Valéry was reading too many novels, or perhaps becoming too caught up in the endless shadowy betrayals of the new order. Of course Maurentz was sharper than he looked, saw deeper and more accurately. Had he not been - subtly, untraceably, completely deniably - providing information to Valéry these many years? Hints, suggestions, idle comments with a sting in the tail, Valéry’s best and most reliable source since he first came to Zernitz, when he was still young and comparatively untried. There was no call to be unsettled by it now. He would have his fitting, then sit in the dark little backroom with Maurentz, drinking searingly hot mint tea, talking about everything and nothing, and leave with a ragbag of tips and rumours, which followed up and fitted together would make sense of another corner of Zernitz. That was the way it worked._ _

__“Yes,” said Maurentz, with another knife-like flash of that smile, “I like to see people who know how to blend in, new young men with new ideas who still know enough to respect and follow their elders. That is the sort of man I am always happy to advise. The sort of man it is good to keep around.”_ _

__There was a compliment in there somewhere, Valéry knew Maurentz well enough by now to sense it, but “You do realise I’m not a young man myself anymore?”_ _

__Maurentz gave a bark of laughter at that, and patted him consoling on the shoulder. “That depends how you count it. If you take a long enough view, we’re all still young. Now get changed and come into the back, where we won’t be disturbed.”__

____

____

***

The sun had long since set; only a few streetlamps sputtered feebly against the darkness. It was cold as the grave.

And yet, it wasn't quite dark: perhaps somewhere there was some sliver of moon, so that the trees and buildings were not quite invisible after all, but faintly, very faintly, silvered. It had the off-kilter charm of a photonegative, the familiar made strange and new. But it was so very cold.


End file.
